Reminds me of Red Dawn I. “WOLVERINES!”
Didn’t help them in Afghanistan.
Ahhhhh....the great dream. A vehicle small enough, and light enough, to fit in AF jet transport aircraft so it can move to the theater of operations at 500mph. It’s also large enough to house a crew of four and 10 Infantry Soldiers. It has enough armor to stop any know weapons from penetrating the armor anywhere on the vehicle. It can go 80mph cross-country. It has a cannon that can defeat all enemy vehicles. It can also fire artillery rounds. It has a built-in air defense system including radar detection. It can swim. It has total night and day detection and targeting systems in every direction. It is small enough to be a hard target to hit. It is maintenance free. It requires no fuel. It’s ground pressure is so low it can cross bogs and sand while high enough to provide great traction. I think the thing that comes closest to this is an E-Tool.
I would want my enemy to land in a bunch, so that my artillery concentrate on them.
Of course I would love to have my enemy attempt to penetrate air defenses with IL-76 targets, too.
In Jump School they used to tell us of a never verified story/legend/myth, of the Soviet paratroopers being dropped without parachutes, into snow banks during the war with the Finns.
Mass airborne drops were cutting edge in World War 2. There only use today is to scare small countries with little military capability. Being able to drop 20,000 troops inside a small countries borders can create havoc, but against the a larger country like China, Russia, or the US.....not so cutting edge. More like sending many highly motivated troops to there death.
I don’t know that anyone beyond historians are truly experts on Airborne operations and I was Airborne.
Modern day Airborne operations among the major powers are too risky for widespread use - placing that many elite soldiers on a cargo aircraft that is vulnerable to being shot down violates common sense if the opponent is formidable.
Airborne operations against small nations with little organization or anti-air capability can still be effective, but they always come with risks. Placing that many soldiers on any airframe over hostile territory is often an unneeded risks that is as much about putting a star on their jump wings as it is about gaining some tactical advantage.
There's no particular role for mass groups of parachute-dropped troops in modern warfare.
There's a romantic infatuation with "paratroopers" who are indeed generally elite due to their selectiveness and training,. but have always done the vast majority of their fighting arriving on the ground.
For the most part mass airborne assaults weren't all that effective in WWII and took astounding casualties. You just end up too scattered and too outgunned. It only works against very weak or no opposition (for example, the Ranger drop at the beginning of OEF). There was one drop in Iraq against almost no opposition in northern Iraq just so a brigade could get its jump badges.
Why can’t anyone do a decent youtube video without setting it to crappy music?!?!
No “Phony Sequester” to interfere with their training and no gaying to disrupt their units cohesion.